The County: The "Dark Continent" of American Politics

by Henry S. Gilbertson

THE POOR

First as to the poor.

We can do no better than to recount the performances of certain typical states. Certainly in New York the substantial improvement of this class has come through no strong impulse within the county itself, but rather as the result of the activities of unusually strong volunteer organizations which forced the fact of the evil conditions upon the attention of the officers and the people of the county and upon the state in general. But lest it should be supposed that New York State is a model in this field, let it be recorded that when by more or less of an accident Mr. V. Everit Macy, a real friend of scientific charity, was elected to the office of superintendent of the poor, he found a system more ideally fitted to take care of “the boys” in the “organization” than the poor themselves. In describing the system he said:

“The law ingeniously divides responsibility so that the superintendent has no power over the admissions to the almshouse or hospitals or of children to institutions but only the negative power of discharge, while the local committing officials have little control after the adult or child is committed. This often results in setting up an endless chain of commitments and discharges, for, as fast as the superintendent discharges an adult or a child, the local official may recommit.

“The superintendent is on a salary but practically all the overseers are paid on a per diem basis, and the justices of the peace are paid a fee for each commitment. If an Overseer issues an order for groceries or signs a commitment, he can collect his two dollars for a day’s work.

“Could ingenuity devise a more absurd and wasteful method of relieving suffering or one where responsibility and control could be more disastrously divided to the injury of the taxpayer and the poor?”[5]

The same authority is responsible for the statement that “the greatest injustice to the individual and injury to the state is now done through the haphazard handling of the cases of delinquent and destitute children.” Overseers of the poor, justices of the peace, police magistrates and judges can all commit children and most of these officials have a monetary interest in committing. Few of them have any means of investigating cases before acting and fewer still have any training to fit them to deal wisely with either the destitute or delinquent child.

But what of other states?

In Missouri where poor relief is a function of the county court, a county almshouse is maintained and a certain amount of outdoor relief is dispensed. Professor Isador Loeb[6] of the University of Missouri reports:

“While the county board is authorized to maintain a county hospital for the sick poor, this has been done in only one county. Nine counties still use the primitive system of sending the poor to board with private families. Most of the counties in abandoning this system have bought a farm and employed a superintendent to look after the poor and use them as far as possible on the farm. As a result the almshouse in the majority of the counties is a farmhouse, and the county is apparently more interested in the successful management of the farm than the welfare of the inmates. While a number of counties have erected modern buildings, the physical conditions in most of the almshouses are very bad.”

With respect to Pennsylvania, the special agent of the department of public health and charities writes[7]:

“Twenty-seven counties have now accepted the Children’s Aid Society as their agent for the care of dependent children. In the other counties nearly every possible method of caring for children is represented in the courses chosen. Where the township system is in use, the few dependent children are placed out by adoption or indenture, by the overseers themselves. Several counties have built homes for the children, an expensive method, with no merit so far as the favorable situation of the children is concerned. Some of the overseers place the children in institutions, while others use private homes to some extent, controlling and supervising the children themselves.”